A collection of quirky kitchen instruments from the Victorian days accumulated by a Lincolnshire man has sold at auction for almost £1,700.

The kitchen gadgets were used by amateur cooks to make their lives easier in the kitchen at a time when few homes had electricity.

Despite relying on hand power, the gadgets - some of which have never been seen in public before - are far from basic and include complicated food processors to chop food, a cake maker for the Mary Berry of the Victorian era, and even an ice cream maker.

Read More

In the same way that top-of-the-range gadgets are sought after by keen cooks today, these devices were popular among Victorians.

But unlike their modern counterparts, many of the gadgets were too expensive for most people to buy and were not highly reliable - so they rarely come up for sale.

Now 25 items of the 'kitchenalia', which were collected by Barry Harris over the last 40 years and date from the late 19th and early 20th century, have been sold for almost £1,700 including commission.

Read More

The collection includes several chopping devices (one of which is above), a coffee grinder and several old-fashioned coffee percolators, a cake maker, a pastry jigger, vegetable slicers, a flour sifter, a butter churn, a fruit press, an ice cream maker and a raisin stoner.

Auctioneer Alastair McPhie-Meiklejon told the Daily Mail: "A lot of these items were really rare. They were the forerunners to the Kenwood Chef and food mixers that really didn't exist before electric.

"These companies were trying to create these kitchen aids and some of them are just charming.

"The way in which they are formed, they are the most ridiculously created things.